Human Rights Watch says Syrian rebels murdered hundreds

Updated
October 12, 2013 09:21:00

Human Rights Watch says it has evidence that Syrian rebels committed war crimes during a raid on villages in the country's east in August. The US group says it conducted an on-site investigation and interviewed dozens of people, and has evidence rebels killed hundreds of civilians.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Syrian Rebels are being accused of deliberately killing large numbers of civilians in the country's east.

Human Rights Watch says it has evidence that rebels murdered hundreds of people in a raid on villages in August. It's believed that hundreds more, most of them women and children, are still being held hostage.

Will Ockenden spoke to Lama Fakih, the Syrian researcher with Human Rights Watch.

LAMA FAKIH: The report is based on an onsite investigation that I conducted in the first week of September in Latakia countryside. What we found is: on August 4th in the early morning hours, opposition fighters from a number of different groups launched an offensive targeting a series of Alawite villages.

Survivors described it, sometimes, you know, through tears, how they fled in the early morning hours, sometimes having to leave behind loved ones. In one case, one resident described how he and his mother were able to flee but they had to leave behind his father and his aunt who because of physical infirmities weren't able to leave. And they were killed. They found them in a mass grave that was located near their home after government forces had retaken the area.

We also heard from individuals about how their children were shot down in front of them as they were running away with their entire families.

WILL OCKENDEN: Were these rogue fighters or was this a large-scale, sanctioned activity by the Syrian rebels?

LAMA FAKIH: Because of the co-ordinated nature of the operation, the fact that multiple groups operated in the same way in a number of different villages at the same time, we believe in fact that villages were specifically targeted. This is not just the work of some rogue fighters, but rather civilians were the intended target of this operation.

WILL OCKENDEN: And what evidence did you have to say it was the Syrian rebels?

LAMA FAKIH: We have information both from the villagers identifying these groups as foreign fighters in many cases.

There are also a number of statements that have been posted and circulated by opposition groups on social media sites indicating that they participated in the operation, that they planned the operation, and, in some cases, these groups have also shown themselves perpetrating abuses.

WILL OCKENDEN: And what would you like to see the reaction from the world be, based on this evidence in this report that you've written?

LAMA FAKIH: We do know, as I was saying, that a number of foreign fighters participated. We believe that a number of these fighters got access to Syria via Turkey. So we are calling on the Turkish government to really step up its border control policies to restrict access to fighters that are committing these abuses in Syria.

We also know that a number of individuals from Gulf states financed and fundraised for this operation. We are calling on the Gulf states to restrict their ability for residents in those countries to be able to send money to these groups.

Continued support for these groups, with the information now that is available, that they may have perpetrated crimes against humanity and war crimes, could make those that support them complicit in crimes against humanity and war crimes.